Police Beat

Advertiser Staff

Canal search fails to find gun

Police on Wednesday searched the Kapalama Canal for a gun connected to the Jan. 7 shooting at the Pali Municipal Golf Course that left two people dead.

The search, which lasted from 9:30 to 11 a.m., turned up nothing.

Lt. Bill Kato, who heads the Honolulu Police Department's homicide and career criminal units, supervised the search by a Navy diver using a magnet, seeking the weapon used in the slaying of Lepo Utu Taliese and Romilius Corpuz.

Kato faces demotion and a transfer out of the Criminal Investigation Division for procedural violations that includes failure to see that members of his Career Criminal Unit wore bulletproof vests during an operation to arrest fugitive Shane Mark at the Kapolei Shopping Center last year. Mark fatally shot officer Glen Gaspar.

Homeless man is attack suspect

Plainclothes police on Wednesday arrested a homeless man in Kahalu'u on suspicion of assault in connection with an attack on an apartment manager Monday in Kane'ohe.

The manager, a 55-year-old man, was kicked, punched and body-slammed after finding a man in a vacant apartment. The manager was treated at The Queen's Medical Center for a broken jaw and other injuries. He will also require oral surgery, police said. The assailant fled.

Police arrested a suspect at Pulama Road and Pulama Place.